By Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD)
“There’s one particular ailment, though, for which I’ve always been singled out, so to speak. I see no reason to call it by its Greek name, difficulty in breathing being a perfectly good way of describing it. Its onslaught is of very brief duration—like a squall, it is generally over within the hour. One could hardly, after all, expect anyone to keep on drawing his last breath for long, could one? I have suffered every kind of unpleasant or dangerous physical complaint, but none is worse than this. Not surprising, for anything else is just an illness, while this is gasping out your life-breath. That is why doctors call it a ‘rehearsal for death’, since eventually the breath does what it has often been trying to do.”
From Asthma: The Biography by Mark Jackson (It should be noted that Seneca died by his own hand for his part in a conspiracy against the emperor Nero, his former student.)